Bell Ringer: Answer True or False • 1. People tend to take greater risks as part of a group than they would if they were acting alone. • 2. When there is no right or wrong choice, people often go with the majority. • 3. Most people try to act as individuals and not simply “go along with the crowd”. • 4. People seldom obey orders to do things that conflict with their own attitudes. • 5. It is “just human nature” to be aggressive. • 6. People are more likely to help someone in trouble when no one else is present to help.
Transcript
Bell Ringer: Answer True or False
• 1. People tend to take greater risks as part of a group than they would if they were acting alone.
• 2. When there is no right or wrong choice, people often go with the majority.
• 3. Most people try to act as individuals and not simply “go along with the crowd”.
• 4. People seldom obey orders to do things that conflict with their own attitudes.
• 5. It is “just human nature” to be aggressive.• 6. People are more likely to help someone in
trouble when no one else is present to help.
Attitude Development
• Attitudes are beliefs and feelings about objects, people, and events that lead people to behave in certain ways
If we believe a person is mean, we may feel dislike for the person and act in
an unfriendly manner.
Attitudes Can Affect Action
Not only do people stand for what they believe in (attitude), they start believing in
what they stand for.
Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).
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Attitudes develop through:
– Conditioning: we are reinforced/rewarded for acting certain way, this then establishes an attitude
– Parent praises (reinforces) child for sharing. Child develops at attitude that sharing is important
– Observational Learning– Teen sees that dressing, acting a certain way gets positive
attention from peers, develops attitude that acting/behaving that was is good
– Cognitive Evaluation: forming an attitude based on available evidence
– Form an attitude about the importance of seatbelts after hearing about a deadly car crash
Affect of Attitudes
• Attitudes very often affect our actions• Ex: I believe aerobic exercise can help prevent
heart disease, therefore I exercise regularly.
…But not always!• Smokers know that smoking causes lung cancer…
yet they continue to smoke.
And sometimes our actions affect our attitudes:
-especially when someone is encouraged to behave in ways that go against their attitude.
They feel cognitive dissonance (an uncomfortable tension/stress due to this contradiction between belief and behavior).
To relieve this tension, people try to justify their behavior and gradually change their attitudes to fit their acts.
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role- appropriate attitudes.
“WHAT WE DO, WE GRADUALLY BECOME.”http://www.learner.org/discoveringpsychology/19/e19expand.html (13 minutes)
